Tag: podcast

Love comes in all forms, and in San Francisco, you’ll encounter love and relationship rituals you never imagined possible. For example (and what an example), writer Anna Pulley shares a story about a fertility party she covered as a reporter. This may also be why she’s not allowed to plan dates anymore—WORTH IT!

She is the author of The Lesbian Sex Haiku Book (with Cats!), which Cheryl Strayed called a “must-read,” which Tegan and Sara said was “an adorable and hilarious way to start the day,” and which Jennifer Tilly said was “thoroughly charming.”

In addition to aweing the creative rich and famous, she gives sex and relationship advice on her blog and in weekly advice columns for The Chicago Tribune’s RedEye and (formerly) AfterEllen. Anna also holds the distinction of competing in the very first Muni Haiku battle in Clarion Alley.

Being an adult isn’t easy, especially when you live in San Francisco where “everyone is perpetually in their late-20s to mid-30s.” So when you end up in San Francisco alone when you’re 22, you do what anyone would do: Go wild and make age-22 type of mistakes.

“Looking back now, it’s a miracle I didn’t die. I got in a lot of shady situations. I lost my beloved leather jacket. I left my Blackberry in a cab. In recovery, they say you have to hit rock bottom before you can get better. But my rock bottom just kept getting lower and lower. I drunkenly ran through the surf on Ocean Beach at 1 a.m. and almost got swept out to sea. I hooked up with a Santa Con Santa on the back patio of Mad Dog in the Fog. I was 22 and alone and nobody was around to stop me so I kept going and kept pushing the limits of what I could get away with and still live.”

Today’s story is from Vivian Ho, who you may remember was the criminal justice reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle from 2011 through 2017. She’s reported on the Mario Woods shooting, the San Francisco Police Department, wildfires, and she recently published an incredible investigative piece called “A Life on the Line.”

She’s seen a lot of San Francisco, from the incredibly serious and life-and-death moments to the more quirky and offbeat happenings around town. This story falls under the more quirky side of the spectrum—and we’ve never felt more spiritually connected to the cooing pigeons on our fire escapes.

Many of us didn’t give city transit a passing thought before we actually had a stake in the game as real-life commuters/fans/foes. In this episode, Steve Pepple reminds us that a passion for the shared experience of public transportation can start even in the most unlikely places.

Sharp-eared listeners may also remember him from a previous episode of this podcast, in which he regaled us with a tale of the time he accidentally wandered into a secret furry party while looking for the bathroom at a cafe. But he’s got all kinds of other stuff going on: Steve is on the board of San Francisco Transit Riders, a rider-supported group for world-class transit in San Francisco. And he’s a designer at OpenGov, where he works toward making cities more livable, whether he’s working on a budget or a bus.

Always terrible with his sense of direction, comedian Tirumari Jothi takes the K instead of the M, and suddenly finds himself at Balboa Park station at 1 a.m. A conversation with a stranger helps him find his way back home to Park Merced, but not before the chat involved topics he never thought he’d hear.

Tirumari has been performing comedy for six years, with stand-up as his first love, but he also loves improv and sketch acting . You can find him either performing with the geeky comedy group he co-founded, Komedio Comedy, or acting on stage with Killing My Lobster (find him at Sketchfest 2018). You can find him on Twitter @tirumari.

Who gave you your first “San Francisco education”? Broke-Ass Stuart tells us that his city primer came at the age of 23, when he was living on Golden Gate Avenue, in a house full of artists, thinkers, and some of Burning Man’s original participants.

The house on Golden Gate was a short-lived experience for Stuart, because six months into living there, the housemates were evicted. Never a group to go out with a whisper, they put on a “rent party,” where throngs of people showed, three bands played, and, at some point, an art car rolled by.

As short-lived as it was, Stuart says that this house was extremely important to him—and to our whole San Francisco community:

It was the spiritual home for so many people. Living that house prepped me for San Francisco because that place embodied all the things I love about being here. It was weird, it was a collection of all different ages, queer and straight…it was art for art’s sake and that’s the thing I love about San Francisco. It was weird for weird’s sake.

I’ve always been attracted to the other…all of a sudden I was in a house of people who lived that way. Their religion was, “Why Not?”

It was a primer for me into learning what San Francisco meant as an idea, a concept, a feeling.

When a poet lands in San Francisco, even our romantic Victorian city may not be enough to make a love affair last. Today’s podcast is from Vietnamese-American author Andrew Lam, who was also the web editor of New America Media for many years.

In 2005, he published his first book, Perfume Dreams. He is also the author of the book Birds of Paradise, about the Vietnamese immigrant community in the Bay Area. He is working on a fourth book tentatively titled Stories From the Edge of the Sea, a collection of stories about love and loss. Many of the stories are based in San Francisco and Vietnam, both places in which the seaside plays a prominent role: geographically, thematically, and metaphorically.

Today’s story is a more literary departure from our regular storytelling approach, but we think all San Franciscans listening may find a bit of themselves within this piece.

You can find this piece excerpted in Andrew’s new collection of stories. You can also find a transcript of “The Shard, The Tissue, an Affair” below. To submit your own story, please email us your pitch at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com.